A HISTORY OF SURREY 



towards Newington/ This was down the other branch of the road from 

 London Bridge, the Surrey not the Kent road. Two of the Anabaptists 

 were foreigners, to judge by their names. The third name is not given. 

 On I July, 1 541, Sir David Genson or Gunston, a knight hospitaller, was 

 hanged at St. Thomas' Waterings for denying the royal supremacy. Of 

 course Anabaptists went about with their lives in their hands ; however 

 harmless they might be personally they suffered for the follies of their co- 

 religionists. The Church and State can hardly have been much endangered 

 by the vicar of Wandsworth, much less by his servant. A knight 

 of St. John may have been a traitor to more purpose. In Edward's reign 

 some Surrey men were hanged for the troubles of 1 549, but there were 

 other reasons for their discontent besides religion. In Mary's reign there 

 is little trace of Protestant opinion in Surrey. The Bishop of Winchester, 

 who was Chancellor and in fact Prime Minister, examined men accused 

 of heresy at St. Mary Overie's, but they were not Surrey men nor holders 

 of Surrey livings. During his episcopate, in Mary's reign, no one 

 suffered as a heretic in his diocese. Under his successor, White, a native 

 of Farnham, three martyrs were burned in St. George's Fields in May, 

 1557. Their names were Stephen Gratwicke, William Morant and King. 

 The only point known about their origin is that Gratwicke was not a 

 Surrey man, but lived at Brighton and tried to save himself by urging that 

 he was only answerable to his ordinary, the Bishop of Chichester. The 

 weavers and tailors, and poor men and women, whom the authorities in 

 some dioceses, London and Canterbury and Chichester chiefly, ferreted 

 out and burned for heresy, had evidently few counterparts in Surrey. 

 White was not against persecution ; he sat as the judge of heretics out- 

 side his own dioceses of Lincoln and Winchester successively. The same 

 men too were sheriffs of Surrey and Sussex, John Covert, William 

 Saunders and Sir Edward Gage. They were responsible for a share in 

 twenty-seven executions for heresy in Sussex, but only Gage for any in 

 Surrey. Sir John Ashburnham, the last sheriff of both counties under 

 Mary, executed none in either county. The inference is that there were 

 not many heretics in Surrey, or that they were not very strongly pro- 

 nounced in their opinions and were able to keep them out of sight. In 

 the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, when the penal laws were sharply 

 enforced, Surrey was again the scene of some executions. William 

 Way, alias Flower, was hanged as a recusant on 23 September, 1588, 

 at Kingston. He was a secular priest. William Wigges, another priest, 

 was hanged at the same place on i October, 1588. On 12 July, 1598, 

 John Jones, alias Buckley, a Franciscan, was hanged at St. Thomas' Water- 

 ings. At the same place John Rigby, a layman, was hanged on 21 June, 

 1600, and John Pibush, a priest, on 18 February, 1601. These may be 

 fairly set down as sufferers for their religious opinions and as representing 

 a certain existence of these religious opinions in Surrey. In the struggle 

 between the queen's government and the forces of Rome religious dis- 



1 Stow, Chron. 4, to p. 974. Two of them were named Mauldeuens and Colens, so they were 

 probably Netherlanders, not Surrey natives. 



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